


Bartering for Wings and the Right to be with You

by sweetNsimple



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Angst with a Happy Ending, Heaven & Hell, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Romance, Sacrifice, heaven and hell au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 06:56:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10551974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetNsimple/pseuds/sweetNsimple
Summary: In this way, angels and demons find one another.  The Devil does not mind.  The Devil finds it fortunate.  The Devil believes this is good for the working dynamics of angels and demons.The God watches and the God does mind.  The God created free will and love in humans and humans are imperfect.  The God strives for perfection in their angels.The God erases that batch of angels and creates a new generation.  Demons who lose their beloved winged ones lose their sense of reason, their sense of hope, their sense of loyalty.The Devil destroys them because the creatures of Hell are all the same in one respect: They are honest.  Once a demon admits to love, there is no denying that that love has become a part of them.  No demon can survive half-fulfilled and half surviving on the rage of purposeful loss.





	

The Devil is not necessarily malevolent, nor benevolent.  The Devil does not dictate punishment unfairly, nor give mercy where mercy is not due.  The Devil is fair.  Where the world is unfair, where mothers who love their children lose them and mothers who despise their children raise them, the Devil, at least, is fair. 

The Devil employs this in their demons; take deals, take souls, but never take more than given and never lie.  Mislead, cheat, be choosy and selective – but lies will always hurt less than the truth because lies can be disproven.  Hurt humanity with the truth, reveal to them their own oily and core-deep stains, force them to bear witness to the secrets they keep from themselves.  Why lie, why steal, why take – when one truth can lay bare a human being and make them beg for redemption? 

The Devil is fair that way, and so are their demons.

The God is not fair that way.  The God came first and the God has seen too much.  The God will lie, because humans will listen to lies.  Humans have obeyed a book overflowing with lies for thousands of years, believing the words on the pages to be the word of the God, but they are not.  Those words have changed as many times as the years that had passed since the God had welcomed his mortal son home.  So the God will lie, simply because humans have lied for the God for as long as humans have known how to tell an untruth.

And the God will take, because they believe that all life must eventually end.  They think they will let the humans dwindle away like every cycle of life that had come before and replace them once more – with something hardier, something wiser, something less prone to war and bloodshed.  The God takes life and the humans give life and the God does not grow frustrated because the God does not understand the concept of time.

So the God will lie and the God will take, but the God is good and the God is great.  The Devil is the liar, the cheat, the thief, the murderer, the bad.  The Devil is terror, is monstrous, is ugly and impure.

The Devil _is_ impure.  The Devil is many things.  But so is the God, yet human kind sees no fallacy in the God’s teachings.  The Devil has no opinion on this.  Human kind is silly and too short-lived for the Devil to be offended.

The Devil sends demons away to do their work: To collect the damned, lead the lost, punish the wicked, test the uncertain.  The Devil does not totally trust, but the Devil does know that, if a single demon were to ignore the Devil’s rules, the demon would not like the consequences.  The Devil lets them go and does not watch because the demons watch one another and the gossip is always strong and loud enough for the Devil to hear. 

The God does watch their angels because the God has little else to do and little compassion to give.  The God gives what moral and good left in their Grace to their angels, and the angels carry the God’s Grace in their chests like hearts.  The Grace pulses and beats and the angels cradle their hands to their chests to feel this semblance of life that they pretend not to envy in human kind.

Humans long ago thought that this was how angels prayed, with their hands pressed together over their breast.  It is not.  This is simply how they worship their own existence.  Like humans, they can also be short-lived.  The God has deigned to leave the humans be; they are messy and strange to mold.  The God molds their angels instead, and will wipe away whatever design they do not like.  Hundreds of thousands of angels have already been erased in this way.  The God cannot find perfection in humans, and so the God creates obsessively in their angels what they believe perfection is. 

The Devil does not bother.  The Devil, a child of the God, has discovered what the God has chosen to be blind to: Perfection does not exist.  Within imperfection, there is beauty.  Within imperfection, there is strength and choice and hope.  Within imperfection, there is the God, the Devil, the demons, and the angels.

The Devil sends their demons to work and the God watches avidly as the angels descend to their duties. 

The angels and the demons are not at war, not like humans believe they are.  The angels must bless the good, honor the honest, guard the fortunate, guide the unfortunate.  They follow in the footsteps of demons to find their charges and the demons follow in the footsteps of angels to find their own. 

In this way, angels and demons find one another.  The Devil does not mind.  The Devil finds it fortunate.  The Devil believes this is good for the working dynamics of angels and demons. 

The God watches and the God does mind.  The God created free will and love in humans and humans are imperfect.  The God strives for perfection in their angels.

The God erases that batch of angels and creates a new generation.  Demons who lose their beloved winged ones lose their sense of reason, their sense of hope, their sense of loyalty.

The Devil destroys them because the creatures of Hell are all the same in one respect: They are honest.  Once a demon admits to love, there is no denying that that love has become a part of them.  No demon can survive half-fulfilled and half surviving on the rage of purposeful loss.

 Demons and angels work well together.  In only a few generations of angels, it is realized that they will only survive if they do not work _too_ well together. 

Which is highly unfortunate.  This is when Bartholomew ascends from Hell and Leonard descends from Heaven and they meet in the middle, on Earth, and they fall in love.

They fall in love like idiots.

~::~

Heaven does not allow for intense emotions.  In a few more generations of winged ones, all emotions might be missing from the God’s latest attempt at perfection. 

Leonard is, at first, unmoved by the demon with the hazel eyes, who smiles and gushes and moves easily into his space.  The demon is Bartholomew and Bartholomew has the audacity to tell Leonard, “Call me Barry.  Everyone else does.  You should too.”  
Bartholomew is too casual, too lenient, too expressive – he aggravates Leonard by his existence alone, but then further irritates him by following Leonard across the globe.

Bartholomew leads the lost, punishes the wicked, tests the uncertain, and collects the damned.  He does his duties, not with an air of sick enjoyment or even unbearable weariness, but with deep concentration and determination, as if every duty is equally important to him. 

Except they are not.  Bartholomew does not enjoy punishing the wicked.  He is quick to collect the damned and move them to Hell where they will pay their dues in toil, blood, and nightmares, but he himself does not dole out the punishments.  He will test the uncertain and be pleased when they do not fall to immorality, but rise to altruism.  However, Bartholomew is happiest when he leads the lost.  He is most content when he is the force that pushes humans to push through their bad days until they have the strength to recognize their good days; when he is the force that turns rotting souls fresh, he smiles. 

Leonard first knows that his Grace is failing him when that smile has an effect on him.  Leonard thinks, _The God will have to destroy me now_ , because he is imperfect.  He does not know what love is, but as days trudge on and Bartholomew always finds him, always smiles at him, always stands too close and touches the rays of light that are his feathers, the cosmic energy of his primaries – he knows what _falling in love_ is and he is doomed. 

He is going to be wiped away and a new angel, an angel with an even lesser ability to love, will replace him. 

He has to make Bartholomew leave, he decides.  He has to make Bartholomew leave _him_. 

Bartholomew is a demon.  Demons are honorbound to take deals with humans; humans are not always content with what they have, and so they barter, and demons will gamble.  The price they pay depends on what they are paying for.  Leonard has seen Bartholomew make several deals and now he pushes the wrong sort of humans to make another.  He can see the greed like grease in their veins, he can taste the rage around them.  He pushes on their psyche and they are strong-minded, but not strong-minded enough to ignore what they had wanted before he pushed.

They summon a demon.  They summon Bartholomew.  Leonard stays outside of the circle instead of inside like he usually does because he wants Bartholomew to know that he is a part of this, that is the driving force behind Bartholomew’s imprisonment. 

The humans are in agreement: They want Bartholomew to kill for them. 

Bartholomew does not take these sort of deals.  Bartholomew is a demon who does not enjoy death. 

Bartholomew is moved to take two lives under his new masters, bound by contact, before Leonard gives up, gives in, and cannot bear to have Bartholomew look at him with betrayal and hurt and anger.

Leonard is an angel, and then he is an angel who has killed.  He only kills one of the humans, and the others scurry.  He erases part of the summoning circle in their lair, which has served as the signed and sealed contract.  Erasing a part of it burns the contract and sets Bartholomew free of them.

Bartholomew appears to him, jaw set and no smile.  He is across the room and not too close.

“Why did you do it?” Bartholomew begs to know.  “Do you really hate me that much?”

Leonard does not answer, but he thinks, _No, but I love you too dearly_.  The words are terrifying, but he does not show his fear.  He cocks his head, looks Bartholomew from toe to head, and disappears in a flapping of wings. 

He hears Bartholomew scream from Heaven and knows that he has destroyed some fundamental part of the demon. 

He aches and hide that he aches and the God studies him closely, aware that some flaw is visible, but unable to discern what this flaw might be.

Leonard knows that the God will destroy him soon enough.  Leonard is very obviously imperfect.  The God simply wants to know in what way so that the God can avoid it in their next batch of angels. 

Leonard returns to Earth and Bartholomew finds him.  There is something hard in his gaze and a sharp turn to his mouth.

“I know why you did it,” he says.  “You’re afraid of what’s between us.  I get it – your God’s crazy and you could literally be wiped out of existence if they ever find out that you’re in anyway _imperfect_.” He says ‘imperfect’ as if the God does not know the meaning of the word and he despises having to use it incorrectly.  “Because wouldn’t it just be lousy if angels could love?” He asks rhetorically.

Leonard grabs him and kisses him.

He will be destroyed soon anyway.  He wants this.  Bartholomew came to him.  Bartholomew did not give him this, but Bartholomew is the demon; Leonard is an angel and angels will do as the God does and they will take without permission. 

He takes and takes and takes until Bartholomew is naked beneath him.  Bartholomew is still livid mad, still baring his teeth, but his hands hold Leonard close and he gasps his name and his thighs clench around his hips –

 _“Len_ ,” Bartholomew gasps.  “Yes, Len, I want – ”

And Len gives.  Len gives because Bartholomew does not take.  And he is Len, which is a creature like Leonard, but is softer inside.  Is loved and gives love and is now a part of Bartholomew forever.

They lay in an icy tundra and Bartholomew is slow and languish against his side, too cold to function and too content after lovemaking to move them elsewhere in the universe. 

“You should call me Barry,” Bartholomew says into Len’s neck.  “Call me Barry, Len.”

“Fine, if it’s so important to you…  _Barry_.”

It is important to him, for some unknown reason.  Barry returns the favor and he is hot inside of Len, he is hot and thorough and he ravishes Len’s neck, shoulders, and chest with kisses and nips.

They claim each other and Len savors the claiming.  Soon, he will have to leave.

Soon, he will be destroyed.

“Don’t go back,” Barry begs.  They lay in the desert.  Len thinks it is too hot, the sun too blaring, but Barry is functioning and content.  “Come to Hell with me.”

“And be what?”  Len asks.  “A demon like you?  Tell me again, what’s it like to be found by a contract with a human?”

It is too soon.  Barry turns away from him.  His shoulders are hunched.  He takes a deep breath and flinches when Len touches him.

“Barry,” Len begins, but Barry pulls away entirely.

“I don’t want you to be destroyed,” Barry says as he stands.  Clothes come into existence on his body, hiding every love bite and shielding every bruise.  He carries Len on his skin and Len is distracted by this fact.  “What can I do?” Barry asks.  Because Barry wants to help.  To be a hero or something of the like.

Barry wants to be an idiot.

Luckily for Barry, Len wants to live. 

~::~

Len does go to Hell.  He talks to the Devil.  The Devil is sometimes a woman, sometimes a man, sometimes has no gender, and sometimes is both a woman and a man.  The Devil is very fluid. 

The Devil kisses Len and then Len is not wholly an angel.  The God cannot destroy something that they did not make. 

The God created Leonard, but Len is new. 

~::~

Francisco is a demon and enigmatic like Barry.  He tells Len to call him Cisco.

Demons are very casual and Len despises that about them.

Cisco is fucking with Harrison, an angel, and Len is intrigued by how Harrison does not fall in love with Cisco.  Cisco thinks he is in love, obviously, but does not shatter when Harrison is wiped away and replaced with Eobard.  Eobard is the new Harrison, a Harrison less capable of emotion.  Eobard tries to kill Cisco.  Cisco is still sad when Eobard is wiped away and replaced with another Harrison.

Cisco calls this angel Harry, much to this angel’s disagreement.

“Whatever, Harry,” Cisco snaps, and he carries the wounds of having cared too deeply, of having survived too much, of being treated so poorly. 

Len opens his wings and Barry becomes a part of him, standing too close with his arms falling over Len’s shoulders and waist.

Len senses that Harry and Cisco might survive together.  Perhaps.  The God has been incessant since Len escaped their grasp.  The God has wiped away many in their goal to create perfection that was nearly Len, but not nearly enough. 

~::~

The day Harry whispers “I love you” to Cisco, Len is aware. 

Len is aware because thunder and lightning trample across the sky and the clouds are dark and heavy for days.  No angels descend.  The God is screaming and destroying and the God is losing hope in creating perfection.

~::~

Harry is in Hell and he is Cisco’s.  Cisco is his.

Len is in Hell and he is Barry’s.  Barry is his. 

This is a love story in that angels should not love, but these two have.  Their love came at a very high price, and angels generations from then would have to pay it.

But love always has a high price, doesn’t it?

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Sorry that there was more backstory than story to this.


End file.
